Morocco - the Mountains and Villages

We left Marrakesh and headed towards the Atlas mountains.  The scenery the whole way was quite spectacular made more so by the sporadic occurrences of Berber villages.  It was beginning to get quite cool - going down to 0C some nights. 

The gray trees that you see below are olive trees. 

Below is the old town of Ait Benhaddou which dates back to the 17th Century and was on the old caravan route of trade goods flowing from the Sahara to Marrakesh.  It is now a Unesco world heritage site and a few families still live in it.

The sunset view from the top

and the view from across the river

The Todra gorge, still in the High Atlas Mountains

This yawning mouth is a cave in the side of  a small cliff and is used by nomads to keep goats.  As it was winter the nomads had moved on. 

This an overview of the caves.  The animals stay inside the rock outlined pen and the people live outdoors.

These are the Monkey Fingers in the Dades gorge - an accumulation of rounded rocks that fills a long gorge.

Going over a pass in the mountains

Villages often seemed perched or even built into the side of these hills

We are now in the Middle Atlas mountains on our way home from the Sahara (stay tuned for the next episode!)  Not as high, but certainly with a good covering of snow

We were going through on a Sunday and this hill was crowded with families sledding  and some even had skis.

Also along the way was the Cedar forest which has families of Barbery apes. 

Thanks for looking and I hope you are enjoying the voyage.